


tangerine

by meraviglia



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: James is a bro, M/M, Marauders' Era, Peter is annoying, legit just pining and confusion, lily is her lovely self, remus is soft and sad, sirius is MIA, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 19:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14775807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meraviglia/pseuds/meraviglia
Summary: Remus has been home from Hogwarts for six weeks, and he feels as though he's living on a separate wavelength.





	tangerine

**Author's Note:**

> Written in an hour, after listening to Tangerine by Led Zeppelin on repeat for a week.  
> I hope you enjoy reading it just as much as I did writing it. 
> 
> Sorry for any mistakes, this is thoroughly unbetad.

The pale light slipping through the lace blinds seemed to betray what summer should be; the normally vibrant sunsets and clear skies seemed to have been traded over for cloudy days, the weather oppressive and dull.

Remus never had liked summer all that much, his affinity for sweaters and tea lent itself more aptly to winter. The faded, plaid quilt was sticky beneath his back, and his record had long since finished, but he didn’t want to switch it over just yet. The faint humming of the needle was comforting, providing a background to his thoughts, or lack thereof.

Summer had always been difficult, ever since he had returned from his first year at Hogwarts to find that his small seaside cottage didn’t feel as it had the year prior. His bed was too narrow, the faded tangerine of the quilt garish rather than comforting. He found he missed sleeping in the proximity of three other teenage boys, he missed the late nights eating sweets in a pale ring of wand light, and as the years progressed, smuggling firewhiskey and butterbeer into the dorms. He missed the nonsensical drinking games they would play, roping the Gryffindor girls in if they were lucky, he missed the way he bewitched his record player to switch from A to B without help, he missed his home.

Most of all, Remus missed his friends. Friends weren’t a familiar concept to him before Hogwarts; children from the small village school were more often than not put off by the scars littering his face, the careful way with which he spoke, his twitchy, quiet demeanour. Of course, he was still in touch with his friends. He had, in fact, received a postcard from Lily just the day prior, a faded, muggle picture of the Acropolis in Athens, with a short handwritten note on the back. She had even taped a drachma onto the postcard, which Remus had placed on his desk, next to the seashell from James, who was vacationing somewhere in the south of France.

Remus hadn’t yet heard from Sirius, but he wasn’t worried. Who was he kidding, the summer before barely a week had passed without news from Sirius, whether it had been a quick sentence scrawled on the back of a drinks coaster, to a three-page long letter detailing the exquisiteness of the skyscraper he was staying in in yet another exotic location. The uncharacteristic silence was worrying, especially as he knew that Sirius was still in touch with James.

Remus knew that Sirius was a perfectly capable sixteen-year-old boy, able to make his own decisions, but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t something in the back of his head, making him obsess over the absence of his best friend. As a result, Remus had spent the six weeks of summer listening to the meagre collection of records he had decided to bring home with him, and walking by the sea, as though he was the lead in a French film, with nothing better to do than mope. At least he hadn’t yet reverted to writing poetry, as that’s when he’d have to really seek help, if not only from Lily.

With a sigh, Remus hauled himself off his bed, flipped over the record and let Bowie’s voice carry him through the tidying of his room, which was quite frankly, a mess. He knew that his mum wouldn’t be home for another hour, and so let himself finger through the stack of crinkled papers he’d tied together. Each was covered in the same elegant, yet messy font, with the day, month and year in the top right hand corner. The letters spanned from October 1971 to a few months prior, the July of 1976, tracking out a tentative friendship in a trail of ink.

The first few letters were similar, all stifled giggles and childish musings, ranging from caricatures of McGonagall to questions about the classwork. As the years had progressed, however, so had the vulnerability within the letters; Remus and Sirius had stopped passing notes in class, instead opting for dinnertimes, fingertips lingering under the table, out of sight of James and Peter. The notes contained thoughts that weren’t able to be uttered out loud, as though keeping them out of their mouths made it that much more bearable. They were all ambiguous of course, mindless gossip, with a quick little ‘that sweater makes your eyes look nice x’ tacked onto the end.

Remus hoped he wasn’t overthinking things, however he doubted very much that Sirius had kept the pile of Remus’ messily scrawled notes in a pile at the bottom of his trunk. He so desperately wanted this to be real, more than just mindless flirting, that it ached him to his very soul.

He tied the twine back up, tucked the pile in underneath his mattress, and made it out of his shoebox room to the kitchen, where his mum was leaning against the countertop, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, a cup of tea in her hands.

“I made one for you, cariad” she smiled, using her free hand to gesture towards a matching mug, steaming on the edge of the sink.

“Thanks, ma”, he picked up the tea, settling onto the countertop next to her, folding his long legs up underneath him.

It had started to rain, gentle raindrops pounding the thin windows, and Remus sat next to his mum, the scent of honey mingling with the earthy tones of her cigarette, listening to her talking about work, her drive home, dinner, his father, and how much she would miss him once he left again for sixth year.

He allowed his mum to talk for a half hour, before he kissed her on the cheek, washed his mug, and padded back up the hallway to his room. It was in a similar state to when he had first begun his tidying venture, and with a sigh, he fell back onto his bed, ignoring the mess of clothes and books on his floor.

Not only was Remus utterly alone over the holidays it seemed that he didn’t even have himself. The sharp, witty personality that he had developed over his years at school seemed to be stripped away as soon as he arrived in his town, and the shell that he had cowered behind for most of his childhood returned. He rolled over onto his stomach, fetching his quill, and a crumpled piece of parchment from the bedside table.

Switching on his lamp to combat the impending darkness, he stared at the parchment, and the first line he had scratched out numerous times over. He couldn’t do it, he didn’t understand how it was so hard to write a simple letter to his best friend. It was either too casual, too whiney, too upbeat, and, on the whole, nothing he wrote felt like him. He took a deep breath, placed his quill down onto the page, and began to write.

_Sirius,_

_It’s raining, and I’m thinking of you. I’m listening to The Smiths, I’m thinking of you. Do you remember when we got drunk and danced to The Headmaster Ritual and you laughed so hard you threw up? I miss that. I haven’t heard from you, and I miss you. Of course, I miss Jamie, and Pete, and Lily, but James has told me a million times over about that bird who he snogged, and Lily has sent me enough book recommendations that I’m set for the next year, and Peter hasn’t failed to describe in excruciating detail how drab his Aunt Maude’s house is. I miss you. How has your break been going? Write soon._

_All the best,_

_Rem x_

With a sigh, he set his quill down, folded his parchment in half, addressed it, and set it down on his desk, on top on a pile of identically addressed pages. It could be sent tomorrow, he thought to himself, changed his record over, and lied down on his bed, pressing his face into the pillow, and breathing in the musty warmth, as though that was supposed to quell the beating of his heart.


End file.
